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Claims Against The Government: Potholes and Poor Road Conditions

Auto Accident Attorney in Las Vegas, NV

It’s your friend’s birthday who you haven’t seen in a long time and you’re cruising along the road to your friend’s house with the perfect gift. Five minutes later, your tires hit a pothole, deflating them and causing minor damage to the vehicle itself. At this point, not only will you not be able to attend your your friend’s party, but you’ll have to pay for a new tire and a little vehicle repair, which considering you drove defensively like a normal person, isn’t fair.

What you can then do is acquire a personal injury attorney in Las Vegas, Nevada to file a personal injury claim against the governing body that’s in charge of that road. It’s up to the government to maintain the roads so that it’s in a state that people can use it daily without a low probability of complication. So if they aren’t maintaining the roads as they should, then they are suspect to negligence.

Once you start the case, the attorney needs to prove that city was negligent which will be a little tricky as there are only a few circumstances that the governing body can be found negligent.

For instance, if pothole has been damaging vehicles with coverage in the newspaper for a while, that’s definitely enough time and notice for the city to do something about it. If a misplaced sign has been causing confusion and directing them in such a manner that car crashes occur regularly, it’s even more than likely that police officials would’ve informed the government about it and not taking action to repair the road is negligence once again.

If the pothole formed 1 day ago and you just happen to be its first victim, you’re a little less likely to win the case or have a decent settlement. Since the government doesn’t have cameras on every street corner covering every inch of road, it’s reasonable for the city to not be aware of something that happened less than 24 hours ago; to the road no less.

Lastly, the courts will also be looking to make sure you’re not partially at fault. This could be the case, that if you happened to already know about the road conditions in that area, then why didn’t you avoid it? Also, if warning signs happen to be in the area for bad road conditions, then that even further bolsters their argument.

If a solid argument is accepted by the courts, whether or not you’ll receive any compensation at all depends on whether or not your state has laws recognizing contributory negligence, comparative negligence, pure comparative fault or modified comparative fault.

 

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